Thursday, November 29, 2012

Claudia Black has a new book out that she cowrote with Cara Tripodi titled "Intimate Treason".

This book was written and created solely for the spouses of sex addicts.  It has many facets to it but what I like the most is that it features a work book aspect that will encourage you to find your own truth and healing as the spouse in the horrific situation.  When you find out that your spouse is living a double life, and you were none the wiser of this, your world very likely will implode.  This book may just help you make sense of what is nonsense.

One thing that I have learned is that the addict says a lot of stupid shit initially.  Their brain is sick.  They are not thinking clearly and most of them are coming clean because they were caught.  Not by choice.  Another thing that I have learned is that a lot of men, and unfortunately my experience right now has only been with men in the addict chair, go to therapy and group therapy and just lie.  They fall short of being in actual recovery.  Of the women in my group, of which there were five of us, only two have actually been in recovery to date of the three years we have been together but all have sworn to be.  The stories are all tragic and my sisters in this pain are all precious.

What we all have agreed upon, our little band of pain swappers, is that we were shocked when we walked into group that first day.  We are all from very different walks of life.  From medical professionals at a very high level to devout Christians to new age hippy types with tattoos, we were different but so much the same. Our ages were from 40 to 60 and we were all very attractive.  We all like sex a lot and we all loved our families.  And we all looked like deer in the headlights.  There is no stereotype for the spouses.  We were not fat bon bon eating slouches who neglected our mens, okay?  We were co-dependents without a doubt but we loved these men who betrayed us in the worst possible manner and we had allowed some behaviors that were completely unacceptable.  I will write about all of this in my future.

So, if you have the misfortune to be one of the ladies of the lodge, as Claudia Black calls us, look at her new book, and I loved the other one, "Deceived".  What I loved was the humanity of it.  The dry stuff that you usually find in self help books did not resonate in her book for me, and I liked that.  I really have a hard time reading self help books that give statistically info.  Most of the sex addict books that I have seen drive me crazy.

Best of luck...

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Four years ago, when I learned that my husband had lived a secret life for 30 of the 37 years of our marriage, I did some things that I regret.

One of those things was to make posts to a website that allows you to post information about people or companies that you feel has wronged you.  I have no idea how I found the site, and in the middle of the darkest time of my life, I did not know that when I posted four reports on that site, I would not be able to remove them.

I was not in a condition to make decisions, I was in shock, pain and very betrayed.  Very.  As you know that this blog was created for partners of sex addicts, it does not take a rocket scientist to know that I am married to a sex addict  What was the hardest to take was that the partners he chose, for the most part, were my friends, so called, and one woman called him and reignited affairs repeatedly over 15 years,  regardless of the fact that she married three times and that she had two children.   This last woman said to me that I was to blame as well as I stayed with him  I was not.  I did not know, I am not a person who cheats, and he honed his ability to lie, cheat and carry on his addiction so that I would not have suspected.  

Recently, someone has begun to stalk me, on this site and on the site that I posted the reports to.

Here is the difference that exists between myself and the reports that were posted on that same site about me.

I posted them out of pain, same as whoever did the one about me, anger, ditto again, and insanity almost, maybe the same.  Mine were true, theirs was not.  Does the truth need to be told?  NO.  Should I have posted them.  Hell No.  I tried to have them taken down almost immediately.  When accused of being a loser on that other site, I do think this is all perpetrated by the same person, I want you to know that you do not know everything.  I am very ill.  

I have cried, begged, gotten sicker physically.  I flew to CA in 2010 to offer solidarity to another person who sued the site trying to have the reports about them removed, only to discover that the person was not someone that I would want to be associated with.  But, I learned some things in all of this.

Never, ever put something on the internet that you think you do not want to be there forever.  I have come to understand the site, the site owner and the legal team quite well.  Do I agree with them on all issues?  No.  I do not think that they should have personal reports on a consumer site, I think that it is gratuitous gossip and hurts their credibility if they want to be a consumer action site.  

I used to think that there was a conspiracy going on with Google until I understood more about Google, and I am not going to endeavor to educate here.  I just want to say to whoever is posting to this blog, and to the other site, attacking me, I understand that this is somehow personal to you.  I am not sure if you are involved as a family member of this, or if you are just a person who has experienced this as we all have, but I am sorry.  If I could take all this back, God knows that I would.  I have not had one second of peace since the day that I posted this.  If I hurt you, I am sorry.  If you are someone's child in this horror show, please forgive me.  

I told all players involved, the site owner, the lawyers, leave the reports that are lies about me on there, take the ones I put on there off.  I do not want any innocents harmed, the children, grandchildren.  They should not have to ever see this.  I was not in my right mind.  All that I could get from them was, have ppl put rebuttals on there.  I did not want that, but even with that, I could not think, eat, sleep.  I went days without sleep.  I was so broken for so long.  I have worked as hard as I know how to get this rectified and still do.  I have called senators, congressmen, judges.  The law protects this type of thing...now.  Maybe not in the future.

Hang in there, I am still working on it.  I hate myself more than you can ever hate me.  I should be able to remove what I wrote, it should be my intellectual property, but I cannot.  I have not hidden who I am, the other person who wrote reports has.  

To anyone who wants justice or can no longer breathe, whose heart is ripped from your chest while it is still beating, do not do it this way.  Don't.  You will pay far more than you will ever imagine.

I am so so so sorry.